Meidinliu Newmai hoisted a cooler filled with vaccines onto her shoulder and started walking. She was 50 years old and had a goal: to reach Nenloung Atangkhullen, a village of barely 30 houses in the mountains of Manipur, India, where 17 children were waiting for their polio doses.
There was no road. There was no transportation. There were 28 kilometers of dense forest, steep climbs, and five rivers to cross without a bridge.
Meidinliu has worked since 2007 as an ASHA, an accredited social health activist, at the Tamei Primary Health Centre in Tamenglong district. She knows that path because she has traveled it before. It had never been so long.
She walked for eight hours. Ten of the children were up to 3 years old. The other seven were between 3 and 5. None went without their vaccine.
When the news reached the state capital, Manipur Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla himself publicly recognized her work. The photo of a woman walking alone through the hills, carrying a red box, became a symbol of something that cannot be contained in a title or a salary.
There were no cameras waiting for her in the village. Only 17 children who are protected today because someone decided that no river, no mountain, would decide on her behalf who deserved a vaccine.
